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Stepping carefully around the floor- which currently sported a smattering of papers strewn all around- strong hands picked up a lightly snoring young earthbender (whose fingers still crushed a paper catfrog and a paper war-helmet*). The windows betrayed the time as evening and the clatter of well-worn dishes reinforced the afterglow of a meal. As the man moved his son toward a pile of pillows in the corner, his other son blearily regarded the mess. Little lion-turtles, cranes, catfrogs, throwing stars, horsecows, elkbears and every other animal and noun whose frame and contours could be imitated in paper littered the floor. Bolin loved origami. He could barely fold even the simplest animal face, yet he managed to amass an impressive collection at the hands of others. His honey-eyed sibling sighed once, resigning himself to tossing a combination of crisp and worn paper toys into a simple earthen receptacle.
. . . .
"Mako, please?", his brother looked at him with impossible wide eyes, tears brimming at their edges. His brother wanted to bring the slightly heavy stone box with them.
It wasn't practical. Still, the brothers stood in the midst of cold bodies and unholy smoke, amid a tattered home. They'd yet to depart, quickly grabbing necessary items: two blankets, a cup each, a red scarf, a jade hairpin, lots of extra clothes on their persons and odd-smelling, clumped together rice. The necessities after and during an emergency, as schooled into him at the peaceful, cute place two streets over with brown and orange uniforms- where a kindly teacher showed him to draw his name on a thin, fragile sheet.**
He carefully shook his head. Bolin did not take it well: his face fell into an abyss. Mako frowned as his brother cried quietly to himself. He placed a hand in the little container, rifling through its contents before grasping one more necessary object: a pale purple paper crane. Mako gingerly pressed it into his brother's chubbier hand.
Bolin's mouth emitted a hiccup-sound, as his dirty fingers paled white in their grip.
. . . .
It rained. Water sloshed against the paved nature of the street, forming miniature rivers. Green eyes observed them, even as they carried nothing downstream, toward lower land. The city was chilly. The surrounding leafed trees flirted from green to orange, yellow, and a shockingly vibrant red. The needle-minded trees simply remained the same, hinting of a certain eternity. A little boy leaned against the earth beneath him and the rough wall behind him, trying to find warmth in air: something foreign and confusing. His feet and back, though cold, remained comfortable. His small, chubby fingers shivered with numb, the cold penetrating the feeble cover of a worn brown blanket. Bolin's fingers- nearly frozen- clutched to a pale purple folded piece of paper.
The winds changed, the angle of the clouds changed. The course of drifting, falling water altered. Drops fell on his legs and arms, a few stray ones reaching his nose.
A pale-purple motherly contact in his hands faltered. It soaked. It fell into pasty blobs of sadness. Thus, salty tears joined the cleansing wash of the rain toward the gutters.